Corten steel is often chosen to help buildings withstand nature; an arid desert climate in Arizona or a tough mountainside altitude in Arkansas. The low alloy steel is a resilient skin for architecture living under challenging conditions. Corten steel is also chosen to help buildings live alongside nature. The corten develops a healthy patina of colours from a rusty orange burnish to a textured silvery glaze letting it sink in – or stand out. To help lure and orientate tourists to the desert region of Atacama, a visitor centre by Emilio Marín and Juan Carlos López was built on the land as part of a wind farm. Commissioned in 2013, the Corten steel building makes a strong but welcome intervention on this windswept plain. The architects describe the project in terms of the relationship between landscape and architecture. Six ‘wings’ – perhaps better understood as petals arranged around a central core – form wedge-shaped structures, linked by an internal corridor but reading as an abstracted series of forms from a distance, united by the common cladding material.
